help finding appropriate list for newbie support

[Daniel Robitaille]

On Sat, 2005-17-09 at 09:10 -0700, holiday wrote:
> Sorry if this is not the right place for this question. I am in Canada so...

no, it's a right place. The one thing to remember is that this mailing
list is smaller in size than other more general ubuntu list.  Which may
or may not be a good thing for some technical questions.

> Please tell me where I should post this question, or what I should read 
> before posting. I have made a number of RedHat and Fedora installations 
> so I'm not a complete linux newbie, but I am new to non-RedHat distros.
> 
> I tried the Ubuntu 5.10 preview release live cd and loved it. 

welcome aboard!


> 2. I'm having difficulty managing the partitioning. Is the NTFS problem 
> still a problem? Do I need still need a separate partitioning utility.

it seems NTFS repartitioning from the installer works for most, but not
for everyone (it worked for me).  In the past I have had good success
for my repartitioning needs with qtparted included with the Knoppix Live
CD.  That could be an option to explore if you are having problems. 


>  
> Even if I do, I found the UI quite frightening. I was never really sure 
> what was going to happen. Is there a detailed discussion of how to do 
> this - exactly what keys to press, I mean. I know there is good 
> information about partitioning in general, but I need very detailed 
> documentation on the Ubuntu installer process. On one pass through I had 
> to hit the power button to abort what appeared to be a certain disaster.

Totally agree about the confusing menus/screen.  I finally used the
installer for the first few times semi-recently, and I have to say that
the smiley faces, sad faces, lighting bolts and other little icons
(without any on screen explanations) were a bit confusing; same thing
with some of the options available to select.

But on the good side of things, once you install Ubuntu once on a
computer, you may well never have to use the installer ever again since
apt-get does a great job upgrading Ubuntu (and Debian) between versions.


-- 
Daniel Robitaille   
  Email: robitaille at ubuntu.com   Jabber: robitaille at jabberme.org